VAPING INDUSTRY EXPECTED TO HIT $10 BILLION BY 2017

How popular are electronic cigarettes these days? I counted four new vapor shops in my medium-size Chicago suburb yesterday, all of which opened in the last half year. And this is at a time when more stores in my community are closing than opening.

And this trend isn’t limited to my suburb, either. The vapor industry — the shops that sell electronic or e-cigarettes are known as vape shops — is in the middle of a boom. The Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association says that the e-cigarette business is expected to become an industry worth $10 billion or more by 2017.

According to a story by BloombergBusinessweek, there were more than 3,500 independent vape shops located across the country in 2013. The reason? The e-cigarette business can be a profitable one. The BloombergBusinessweek story quoted the owner of a vape shop who said that while he can mark up traditional cigarettes by 10 percent to 20 percent, he can mark up e-cigarette dispensers, nicotine cartridges and accessories by 200 percent to 400 percent.

Cynthia Cabrera, the executive director of the trade association, predicts that vape shops will only become more popular as a growing number of consumers turn to e-cigarettes instead of traditional cigarettes.

And in a written statement, Cabrera said that this is good for the economies of the communities in which these vape shops are opening.

“As the economy is rebounding, many of these businesses are helping the recovery by creating jobs through innovation,” Cabrera said in her statement. “Vapor products are fundamentally driven by technology, so there are continuous opportunites for growth and enhancement.”

Commercial real estate pros across the country have seen this surge in vape shops and e-cigarettes. During an interview earlier this year, Richard Meginnis, executive vice president and business manager with NAI FMA Realty in Lincoln, Neb., said that vape shops are popping up in several of the smaller strip malls in and around Lincoln.

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The big issue that’ll swing the elections? Vaping, says Grover Norquist

Vaping is becoming more popular everyday and will be a political issue. 

I joined a pre-debate panel discussion Wednesday night in Irving sponsored by the Institute for Policy Innovation. Also on the panel were Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist, State Sen. Van Taylor and State Rep. Matt Rinaldi. The panel, like the audience, was oozing with conservative values, and Ted Cruz campaign stickers were being passed out like Halloween candy.

Norquist, a national libertarian leader who has rallied Republicans behind his no-tax-increase pledge 219 House members and 49 Senators have taken the pledge), spoke first and focused his 15-minute talk on the major issues that are helping the GOP win local and state elections across the country. He talked about gun rights, unsurprisingly. He is on the board of the National Rifle Association.

But the big surprise was when he suggested that one big issues gaining a toehold ahead of the 2016 elections is … (drumroll, please) vaping. As in e-cigarettes. It turns out that the Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, are bound and determined to yank the e-cigarettes right from the lips of freedom-loving Americans in order to protect Big Tobacco and the government’s tax share from cigarette sales. Because that’s what Democrats do.


“The do-gooder movement was never about public health; it was always about money,” Norquist and colleague Paul Blair wrote in the National Review this month. “Since 1998, governments have collected more than $500 billion in cigarette taxes and payments from smokers. In 2013, Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) payments and taxes helped the government rake in nearly $44 billion. No such punitive tax regime exists for e-cigarettes. Each time a smoker picks up an e-cigarette in Michigan, the state loses $2, and the federal government loses $1.01 per pack; in Illinois, $1.98; and in New York, $4.35. It adds up quickly, and for big spenders in state capitols, that’s a problem.”

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Nicotine gets a bad rap - Learn about Nictone

Nicotine Molecule

Nicotine gets a bad rap.  Thought to be extremely addictive due to its mind-altering properties, it has been blamed for everything from heart disease to cancer.

Known as the main psychoactive ingredient in tobacco, public health experts have been warning for years that even one nicotine-laced puff of a cigarette can leave one hopelessly addicted for life.  Many also warn that nicotine itself is very dangerous – it is extremely toxic, even used as an insecticide, and has no benefit whatsoever other than to provide relief from the insufferable withdrawal that results from addiction.

No benefits at all??

Yet, now nicotine is being offered as a medication, used to help ease people off of cigarette addiction.  It is widely available over the counter at pharmacies everywhere and is one of the most highly recommended medications for smoking cessation.

If nicotine is so dangerous, then why would it be freely offered as a medical treatment to millions of people?

Also, if nicotine is the main psychoactive ingredient in tobacco, yet has no benefits at all, then why would nearly 20% of the population smoke daily?  If it really does nothing but feed the addiction, then they should all be able to just quit smoking and never touch it again.  Right?

What are the real effects of nicotine, apart from cigarette smoke?

The truth is, nicotine isn’t nearly as dangerous, or as addictive, as we’ve all been led to believe.

So how dangerous is nicotine?

Toxicity

It is true that nicotine is an effective insecticide, and that it is toxic in high doses.  However, just about everything is toxic in high doses.  People can die from drinking too much water in one sitting, but you don’t hear doctors telling people to stay away from water.

How much nicotine is deadly?  It has been long believed that only 60 mg is required to kill an adult human when ingested (to put that in perspective, that is less than 3 ml of 24 mg/ml e-liquid).  This figure has recently been contested however, and traced back to faulty experiments conducted in the 19th century.

The true lethal dose has since been estimated to be at least 500 mg for an adult, or no less than 6.5 mg per kg of body weight.  Unfortunately many health experts and researchers continue to tout the false lethal dose of 60 mg, thereby misleading the public into believing that e-liquid is extremely dangerous.

Reportedly, calls to poison control centers over ingestion of e-liquid have been increasing in recent years.  However, there has not been a single reported death or serious injury from nicotine ingestion in the last few years, which is consistent with our current understanding of what the lethal dose of nicotine actually is.  In the majority of cases the most severe side effect reported from nicotine ingestion is vomiting.

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British smokers urged to start vaping by health officials

E-cigarettes should be available on the NHS, public health officials have said despite conflicting evidence over their safety.

Britain’s eight million smokers have been urged to start ‘vaping’ after a government-backed report found that the electronic devices are 20 times less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

So far no electronic cigarette has been licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

But a new report launched today by Public Health England, Kings College London and Queen Mary London, found e-cigarettes carry just five per cent of the risk of tobacco and should be widely adopted by smokers.

If every smoker in Britain switched to vaping, around 75,000 lives a year could be saved, they estimate. The experts called for e-cigarettes to be prescribed on the NHS once regulated.

Nagy Memes Szabolcz and Georgia Samuels at Vapefest, Shrewsbury
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